Some of you may have caught that I was out of town over the weekend and actually didn't get back until pretty late last night. This was an engineering meeting, but it ended up also being a lot of fun in other ways. My boss the Chief Technical Officer lives in Ohio and for years has been mentioning food, and places like Jeni's Ice Cream. One of the engineering staff that also lives in Ohio is moving to Seattle soon so they decided to have an Engineering "meeting" and he flew myself, and the other engineer who lives in the Denver area down to Ohio.

I typically eat one and maybe on rare occasions one and a half to two meals a day. So eating regularly and large amounts of food is not something I am used to. We ate a lot of food.

There was another event going on in Columbus, Ohio while I was there known as Origins which is a big table top, and pen and paper type gaming convention. We actually spent quite a bit of time there on Sunday and I would end up purchasing a nice set of metal dice that have some serious heft to them and thus will double as weapons if needed.

So yes this is a geeking out or even nerding out type convention if you choose to view it as that. I'll happily accept either or both of those titles.

Now I know in this day and age people see many photos of cons, and even tons of youtube videos. In fact, we walked past people clearly making youtube videos, kickstarter videos, etc. My friend from Denver also noticed some youtube table top gaming reviewers he has been following for years so he had a bit of a fandom moment there which was fun to witness.

Now I naturally have a bit of a shaky hand, as does my youngest son so I can't even show you all of the photos I took as many of them are pretty blurry. So if you see some blur in some of these, my apologies I shared a few that I thought were passable and interesting here. We all have many flaws, and lack of a completely steady hand is definitely one of mine.

This next image I personally found personally VERY amusing. Only at a gaming convention do you have to set aside areas that you specially forbid gaming. I thought it was pretty funny and I definitely chuckled quite a bit as I stated "I need to get a photo of this!"

This next one I thought was a pretty cool little design visually so I captured a shot of it, and yes the entire time I was taking photos I was thinking of sharing them with my family and steemit. I even did a bit of steemit promoting with some artists while I was there.

I don't think I managed to catch people I actually knew in most of my photos, so yes, I was a stranger among friends with common interests a thousand plus miles from my house. If we need evidence of how much the world has changed within the last century we only need consider how casual and normal the ability to travel far, meet up, do some fun things, and then travel back is. Add to that people living vicariously at near instantaneous speed through people sharing images, voice, video, etc. The world is changing at a rapidly accelerating pace. Good Ol' Moore's Law.

This next one does actually have my friend Bryan and fellow engineer I traveled with from Denver holding his Cool Stuff, Inc. bag which they were giving away free and staring off into the distance. Bryan is my fun friend when it comes to company meetings and eating as well. I tease him and tell him I think he swallowed a bag of holding, or he has a stomach of holding. The gamers out there reading this will get and understand the reference.

Now there was something I found very entertaining art wise, and it gave me a goal if I ever am wealthy enough to do it. Many people have trophy rooms with the animals they have killed mounted on the walls, etc. I found a number of booths that made great sculptures exactly in this style of mounted heads of mythological creatures and monsters. I decided that would be the type of trophy room I'd actually find amusing and entertaining. I of course had to circle back and get photos of these things.

Now I did of course mention steemit to these artists. I know the odds of them actually checking it out are slim. You all know the uphill battle this is. You mention it and people conditioned with normal reactions to things that sound "too good to be true" will typically not give it a second glance and will simply nod at you. I did put forth a little effort though at that, and I will continue to do so.

Barley's

So after we left the convention center we walked a way to a local pub/diner called Barley's. They had pulled out some extra stops for the convention to the extent of totally reworking their menu with tons of Dungeons & Dragons references which I read and laughed at quite a bit. I actually have the menu as she told me they were about done with them and I should take them. She gave me a menu and several coasters with Origins 2017 and a Tomb of Horror symbol on them. Yes, I am a geek.

I had an Elminster's Fowl & Nutty from this menu, and I only managed to eat half of it. We had a big breakfast and I am just not used to eating that much. My bosses dogs were very happy to see me when they got to eat the other half.

So later that night we went to a local establishment that is well known I guess called Thurman's. I had a pretty big philly steak like sandwich that also used like Gyro style meat for the sandwich. It was so good that I actually ate it all. Two of the other people my boss, and another co-worker from Cincinnati ate the same thing as me. We all gleefully chuckled at Bryan as he was known for taking "challenges" when it came to eating... This was no exception.

He ate "The Thurmanator" and you should say that with an Arnold Schwarzenegger type voice. The amount of hamburger alone was about equivalent to 6 quarter pounders and that did not count the ham, and bacon. Yes, I did get a photo for not only your amusement, but for my own, and my family.

This is Bryan taking a picture of his meal BEFORE he began to eat that thing. We shared a hotel room and yeah I had to ask him if he was okay a number of times. The involuntary groans were a pretty good indicator. The next day he was in pretty good shape and ready to eat some more.

We also visited Jeni's Ice Cream place three different times while we were there as we'd always heard about the great ice cream. Each time I purchased what is known as a trio and gives you 3 half scoops to try out. This should let me maximize trying out the flavors. That should have been nine flavors, but I broke down and only had 8 flavors because my last trip I definitely needed another scoop of Brambleberry before I left. That place makes very good, and very unique ice cream. I didn't remember to take any photos, but let's see what type of information I can find related to that for any of you ever passing through Ohio and potentially looking for some truly excellent Ice Cream.

I am back home, back at work, and back at steemit. I hope some of you enjoy what I shared here. I don't travel much so this certainly will not be a common type of post from me.